


Hangover Hearts

by gayspaceelf



Series: Old Lands, New Frontiers [1]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 3
Genre: Angst, F/M, Gen, Gender Dysphoria, Implied Relationships, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-20
Updated: 2016-07-20
Packaged: 2018-07-25 15:44:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7538533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gayspaceelf/pseuds/gayspaceelf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>He's alarmingly thin, covered in dust, and calling himself Isaac when he returns to the Vault.</i>
</p><p>Trouble on The Homefront angst, with trans man Lone Wanderer, and implied past Amata/Lone Wanderer</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hangover Hearts

He's alarmingly thin, covered in dust, and calling himself Isaac when he returns to the Vault.

Amata almost doesn’t recognise him but for the suit he’s wearing, blue even under the layers and layers of dark mud caked over it. Under the glare of the fluorescent vault light, she can see the scars, disorganised diagonal lines over his face, long streaks of barely healing skin. Thinking about where they came from leaves her sick to her stomach. 

“It’s really you”, she begins, voice coming out shaky even as she wills it to remain steady. "I didn’t think…"

“Yeah”, he says, and Amata flinches at the sound of his voice. She shouldn’t, she knows. She should have expected this, she knows. But somehow she’d expected him to be more like he was before, that once all the dirt was washed off, he’d be the same man he was before he left. 

He coughs, noticing her reaction, but trying not to pass judgement, and shifts his weight, leaning against the doorway. They stand like that for a while, in silence, the hum of machines around them, just taking each other in.

It’s him who speaks first.

“I grew my hair out”, he says, and Amata tries to hold back a laugh. He has, of course he has. She still remembers the day he came to her with a pair of stolen clippers, begged her to help him. Still remembers the way he beamed as he looked at the clumps of hair in the washroom sink, head shorn almost bare. 

“It looks good”, she manages. And it does. He looks much older, like he’s finally grown up, but with it grown harder, harsher. There’s no beaming smile, but the corners of his lips turn upwards. And it’s everything and nothing like Amata remembers. 

\--

It’s not as if she didn’t know, because she knew. She knew before anyone else did, went searching through archives for him, found him the names and stories of people centuries dead, found him lists of unpronounceable chemicals and procedures. Sat with him on her bed as he pored over them, watched as his eyes flicked up and down the lines of ink, treating them like they were sacred. Maybe they were to him. 

She really shouldn’t be so surprised that, when he tugs the suit down to remove a bullet from his shoulder, the layers of tight fabric are gone, and that there are two scars in their place.

She swallows down her nausea, although if it’s because of the way he digs his fingers into the wound, or the rough uneven stitches still visible on his chest, she can’t tell.

\--

“Have you been wearing that suit for a year?” she finally asks, her voice mercifully steady as she speaks.

“No”.

“Then why…” she trails off, gestures towards him in a loose, messy sweep of her hand.

He coughs, toying with a cigarette between his fingertips. She watches each of his motions as he lifts it to his lips, and she briefly thinks about how things used to be. How they were back when she knew him, back before James ruined everything. When they were stolen moments and nervous intertwining fingers and passed notes in class. 

“I wanted you to recognise me. To know who I was”, he says, and she understands completely. 

She doesn’t know him anymore.

\--

They all notice, but Wally is the first person to say something. 

Amata isn’t there when it happens, but she hears a few words, and she’s told about more. And she sees the aftermath, Wally near screeching in pain as blood flows from his nose, and Isaac stands over him. He’s calm, too calm, like all emotion has evaporated from him, and his mouth is curved into a cruel smile even as he near radiates cold rage.

“Shut the fuck up, _Nosebleed_.”

It’s nearly the most words Amata has heard him speak at once since he came back, the longest she’s listened to the new tone of his voice, low and hoarse as his twists his former nickname between his lips and spits it out.

Amata wonders if that’s what the wasteland has done to him, chewed him up and spat him out, face and body streaked with scars and a rough stubble starting to form above his lip and around his chin.

“Fuck you”, Wally says, before flinching as Isaac takes another step closer to him.

“Don’t you ever say that about me again, don’t you fucking dare”, and the words are hissed between clenched teeth, like some kind of fucked up promise rather than simply a threat. “And don’t talk about my dad like that ever again.”

That should have been the first sign something had changed, Amata thinks in hindsight. James may have been a good man, but he was never a good father, and Isaac loved him only in that he despised him in equal measure. 

There’s a snarl, and it’s something primal and guttural, something that she would never expect him to be capable of making, and something that sends a shiver of fear through her, as he walks away. She can see something predatory in his movements now she’s able to look closer, now that the immediate danger is over and she can breathe again. 

“He’s dead”, her old friend says, and his voice is emotionless once more. “He’s dead and he died for something better than any of you ever will.”

\--

“Isaac”, she says, barely realising that it’s the first time she’s said his name out loud.

“Yeah?”

It breaks her heart to say those words, but she is Overseer now, and she has a job to do. 

“You need to leave.”

His jaw, squarer than she can remember, clenches, and for an instant she swears she can see a flash of something behind his eyes. There’s a quiet sound as his fingers rub against his suit material as he digs in his pocket for a cigarette. 

“I’m sorry”, she begins again. “You’re a hero. And you have to leave.”

It’s a few moments before he speaks, lighting his cigarette with a lighter that is too bright, too shiny, to avoid looking at her. “Okay.”

She tries to fake a smile, but she can’t.

 _He never used to smoke_ , is all she can think.

**Author's Note:**

> me: i hate angsty trans stories. why can't we ever be happy in fiction
> 
> also me: lmao anywhere heres 1000 words of angsty fallout trans fic


End file.
